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You were the one that made the declaration that if something better existed, then you would buy it. That, by implication, means you have no brand loyalty to Apple, therefore I asked you to prove lack of that brand loyalty by scratching off the logo.

I'll help to try and clarify BitZtream's point a little... not adding an Apple logo onto a computer that does not yet have an Apple logo is worlds different from scratching an Apple logo off of a computer that does have one. "The Apple branding on my devices isn't important" means that one does not care if it's there or not. Not caring about whether or not there is an Apple logo means that, without added incentive, one is not going to add an Apple logo if it's not there, and one is not going to scratch it off if it is. It does not necessitate scratching off an already-existing logo, because it has already been posited that one does not care.Furthermore, if one scratches the Apple logo off of one's computer without an external incentive to do so, then it can be safely assumed that one does, indeed, care whether or not there is an Apple logo on the machine.In fact, I believe that it would be enlightening to see how many people would pay $50 less to get an Apple computer that doesn't sport an Apple logo versus an otherwise-equivalent one that does.

Yes, you are correct. I *AM* concerned enough about logos to the point where they are not the sole criteria by which I choose to use something. Similarly, I know enough about them to realise that just sticking a logo on something means the price of it can be increased. Other than that, I can't say I even remember who made the BIOS on each one of the PCs I own - maybe when I'm bored with "fishing for fanbois and reeling them in", I'll reboot this machine, take a look and then let you know.

It sounds to me like you're making an implicit straw-man comparison here. I doubt that most people who buy Apple products do so solely because of the logo, though that may play a non-zero role in the decision-making process, and the branding likely does get reflected somewhat in the price of the product. For instance, Mac OS X does not come pre-installed (legally) on any other manufacturer's computers that I know of. Say what you will about the relative merits and demerits of that operating system versus others, Mac OS X is more valuable to some people than Microsoft Windows is, and those people will pay a higher price for a Mac than they will for a "Windows machine" of equivalent hardware specifications.

I am not automatically an Apple hater - it's just in 30+ years of using computers and gadgets, I've never worked out a good enough reason to buy anything they've made. I stand prepared to be educated by those who do - so off you go then, I'm listening...

I completely agree with your stated position, though I can only really claim a mere 15+ years of using computers and gadgets, myself.One potentially good reason that one might buy an Apple machine, if you are genuinely looking for such a reason, is to be able to develop applications to sell on the App Store. That kind of exposure could be lucrative under the proper conditions. It's not a good reason for me to buy a Mac for myself, but I believe that it is a good enough reason for the rational consumer who does have those needs.

They are both thefts, stealing ideas or stealing merchandise, where is the difference? Both are the products of others. What if the online source is a paid subscription model? Would that make the two equal? Is it OK to take from an public source like Wikipedia? Does that lessen the crime or just make one victim stand out more than another?

I don't see a difference except in who is getting cheated, in the first you are depriving someone the profits of their successful livelihood, in the second your depriving yourself of becoming better, in fact your caving into the problem many see in "this generation" (which this generation is this at the time is subject to those looking down on them) which is too do as little as possible for the greatest reward. You are establishing a work method that will likely stick with you your entire career and it will hobble them in it.

Downloading a copy of a Ke$ha song and listening to it for one's own entertainment generally does not lead to passing it off as one's own song.On the other hand, copying down what an expert says about one's topic into a paper without citing that expert is, in fact, passing it off as one's own work.It's the difference between downloading Firefox and downloading the source code to Firefox, removing references to the people who wrote the code, compiling/packaging it, and giving it to someone, calling it "this awesome web browser I wrote".(I know, that analogy is flawed in some ways, but it illustrates the main point...)

And again you fail. Math is correct this time, but the statistical extrapolation is flawed.

If the math is the same as what you're doing, then the statistical extrapolation is no different from what you did; I just used more months to illustrate that, as you point out, that extrapolation is flawed, since applying it can potentially result in impossibly large numbers.

So you've hit on what I'm trying to say: you shouldn't project that a browser's market share will increase by k% each month into the future. All browsers' market share figures must add up to 100%. So, right off the bat, the projected share will be greater than 100% after some amount of months.

Unless there's some reason why using 6 months is OK but using 27 months is not? Because with k=40 (see above for what I mean by k), the number is over 100% after 6 months too.

There are other better reasons why you shouldn't use this figure for projections, but I haven't been able to both give those reasons and keep this post kinda short, so I just left it at the one.

If I follow your math correctly, then in just one year, 101% of internet users (17% + (7% * 12)) will be using WebKit browsers, leaving just -1% left to split between Mozilla-derived, Opera, and Internet Explorer!

Take a quick peek at Wikipedia sometime. Though I can't prove that all of these companies will be around forever, I think that companies that have been around through several generations come close enough for me.

Facebook is not going to be the first immortal company.

I doubt any company can truly be immortal, but the companies on that wiki page are as close at it gets.

George Hotz ("geohot") tried his hand at it, given that he had been rather successful at cracking Apple's iStuff. He found an exploit that gave hypervisor access, and in response, Sony removed OtherOS in a firmware update, as geohot's hack required use of OtherOS.

So this can all be traced back to geohot getting involved... though in my opinion, Sony shouldn't have responded by removing OtherOS, causing all the collateral damage. It inevitably was going to result in a lot of really serious people getting involved and, by extension, more stories like this.

A bald-faced lie? They said Wikileaks was violating several of the terms of service. One of the terms of service is "don't use our service to break US law". It's pretty clear that Wikileaks was violating US law. Ergo, not a lie.

Nearly every legal expert who has spoken on this topic has argued that Wikileaks has not violated US law.

At any rate, you're nitpicking over the wording used by the Amazon representative. Perhaps "doesn't own or otherwise control the rights to the classified content" was not the clearest way to put it, but unless you're deliberately being dense, the meaning is clear: Wikileaks is not permitted by US law to distribute these documents. Clearly, distributing documents in violation of US law qualifies under "don't use our service to break US law".

Publishing classified documents is not illegal, unless the documents fit certain criteria that (so far) these leaks do not. The person or organization who leaks the documents does have some liability, but not Wikileaks. As has been said many times before, Wikileaks is analogous to the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers incident.